Access Exchange Server with the Palm Pre (and Get Your Music, Too)

Ah, the soap opera that is the Palm Pre. Shortly after it debuted, I told you five really important things about the Pre you should know before buying one. One of those things? Flaky Exchange Server support. Well, thankfully, you can now cross that one off the list.

The latest update to the Palm Pre's WebOS, version 1.1 -- released late last week -- fixes Exchange support for pretty much everyone, and so I've been rocking out to Exchange mail and calendaring for several days. The Pre now supports Exchange servers that enforce passwords, inactivity timeouts, and remote wipes.

But that's not all. You might recall -- if you follow Palm Pre news, that is --that Apple patched iTunes to block the Palm Pre. Well, WebOS 1.1 also re-enables iTunes syncing (reportedly by spoofing the iPod's USB device ID). So the Pre can sync your music again, for now... until Apple fires the next round.

Other improvements include somewhat faster performance, a bevy of fixes to e-mail and messaging, and thankfully, notifications now fade on their own if the message goes away (such as if you delete it on your desktop mail client). Oh, and there's a new app -- NFL Mobile Live -- but I can't think of anything I'd like to do less than watch football on my phone, so I don't care much about that.

You can see the whole list of changes in WebOS 1.1 on Palm's Web site.

So what about you? Have the rapid improvements and Exchange support made it any more likely you'll buy one?